Mother Country

Shortlisted for the Times Literary Supplement Ackerley Prize 2024

A true story of the passionate and tragi-comic relationship between a mother running from her past in Hitler’s Germany and a daughter running towards it.

Inge was German, half-Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, all of which she chose to deny until the very end. Talented and able, charismatic and infuriating, she surged through life constantly reinventing herself. Sent out of Nazi Germany to the souks of Meknés, she fled a freezing attic in war-torn Brussels to land in a council estate in Birkenhead. London offered the escapee a new start until her past caught up with her. Triumph finally came in France where nobody knew who she was – least of all the friends who adored her.

Led by emotions she could barely understand, let alone control, Inge divided, and often she conquered. After her death, deep secrets emerged.  Her daughters knew that she had always misled others – but not that they, too, might be collateral damage.

Compelling, frank, and witty, this memoir is part detective story, part daughterly fury. Drawn to embrace the identity her mother could not bear, Monique Charlesworth has dug deep into Inge’s story, unveiling tragedy, passion, heartbreak and, finally, the truth.